[I'm going to try and show a map of each day's ride. Right now, I'm only able to grab screen shots for the bike computers. And, as for the variance in the distance and elevations, we are finding that the original maps that James created were using an original version of Garmin GPS, from 8 years ago. We've since seen updates on both Garmin and Ride with GPS that give far better approximations, although we still see some variance between riders who'd ridden the exact same course.]
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| Besides the six riders and Jesse, we had additional company (and very much appreciated it!). Two of James' local friends, including one who accompanied James part of the way during his first venture down to Portugal, now 8 years ago, helped lead us out of Dronfield. They both rode for about 20 miles, helping the group negotiate some of the tricky and very busy intersections early in today's ride. Thank you Andrew. Thank you Tom. |
[There was supposed to be a shot here of the seven of us in front of one of major town statues, where we were being photographed by the local journal, who will report of our progress over our 3+ weeks on the road. We got a nice send off from about 15 local friends and family. Alas, WiFi in this first night's hotel is not working well, so the pix will come in future days.]
They lied about the hills!
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| I'm going to act the proud Dad and give a hearty shout-out to my son Jesse. This is the first time he's done anything like this and he got thrown into the lion's den with a more than 3-week bike tour throughout Europe. When we all agreed that the addition of Jesse to our group would be a good thing, especially having a support car to follow us, Jesse jumped right in with studying videos about SAG vehicles, working on how to driving England and more. Today, even at the first SAG stop, every rider was full of compliments for Jesse. His first day out was a total success! |
At one point, early in today's ride at the first SAG stop, Jesse was letting the riders know that, according to both the route map and to the GPS app, there were only about 1000 feet more of climbing all day, and the hardest of those climbs would be 7%, no, he corrected himself, 7.5%. As Jesse is just cutting his SAG teeth on this trip, we could forgive the error. In fact, there was over 2000 more feet of climbing, including two nasty 11% and 14% grades.
Yes, that steeple on your left does look a bit crooked. It's from a church in Chesterfield that we passed by this morning. There are two stories about the steeple. The first is that the wood that was used in the original building of the steeple was not properly cured. As a result, it warped over the years, causing its twisted nature. The second is a prophecy that suggests that when a truly deserving young lady (I'm sketchy on the details as I was listening while riding through the town so I don't know what qualifies as "deserving.") is married in that church, the steeple will straighten itself out.
Today was a great day to ride. Temperatures starting in the upper 60's and overcast skies. It ended up with temps in the 80's and bright sunshine. Just perfect!
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| The downtown pedestrian mall in Derby. We rode through Derby in the late morning, passing its Cathedral, the university and then this walking only street (we did dismount about a block before we say the local police). It's like Portobello Road in London, but with much less foot traffic. |
Tonight, we had a quick meal here in the hotel, then everyone scattered off to their rooms. It was a long day, especially as we learned that the Garmin bike computers are still giving the Americans on the ride (ie, everyone except James, the local) directions as if they were still in the States. As a result, entering into every roundabout, the computer thinks we're in the right lanes, as in America, and wants us to execute our turns accordingly. A number of us got caught making turns into the wrong spoke of a roundabout, getting error messages on the computer and resulting in extra miles until we worked out where we should have gone.
Now it's off to bed for tomorrow's ride.
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